Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Tunis, Tunis Governorate, Tunisia
About Tarak Mekki
- Tarak Mekki (???? ?????? 27 June 1958 – 31 December 2012) was a Tunisian businessman and political figure.
- He declared himself as an opponent to the president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and a candidate to his succession.
- Mekki was one of the few political opponents calling for an immediate end to the Ben Ali regime, and his prosecution for corruption and torture. Mekki was born in Tunis.
- he embraced many of Tunisia's first president Habib Bourguiba's foreign policies which called for a pragmatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer ties with Western countries.
- He presented himself as moderate and quickly distanced himself from other political opponents including Islamists. After 12 June 2007, Mekki posted his speeches online revealing the foundation of his presidential programme.
- He called for the birth of a "Second Tunisian republic" where rights would be guaranteed to all Tunisians.
- According to him, this was the only alternative to the then existing regime. Mekki claimed that women had been wearing veils as a mean of silent political protests rather than true religious conviction.
- Mekki proposed to fight the "real" roots of Islamic Terrorism and blamed President Ben Ali's policies for the rise of extremists.
- This could also just have been a ploy to gain support in the West, as Ben Ali had similarly proclaimed to be fighting terrorism. Mekki's team produced a series of political comic sketches called "Mille et une nuits" (engl.
- "One Thousand and One Nights or Elf Leila w Leila") in which he ridiculed President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi-Ben Ali, and the Trabelsi family – the name of the sketches themselves a jab at the president's wife. From 8 June 2008, his speeches were broadcast online on various websites including YouTube and Dailymotion as well as via satellite on Nilesat every Monday evening in Tunisia.
- Mekki died, aged 54, in Hammamet.
Read more at Wikipedia